If you are like me, you are fed up with the so-called educated ‘Left’ who are not at all educated in the underlying causes of humankind’s current problems and the solutions to them. You will also be fed up with people believing that when we elect Left or Centre-Left parties, the world is on track to solve its problems, and we can live happily and equitably in the meantime.
If you look at what has happened over the past fifty years to the greenhouse emissions and ecological footprint of nations, you will see that they have continued to rise regardless of who is in government, with the global Ecological Footprint now 1.7 times global Biocapacity and patently unsustainable. You will see that the Gini coefficient of income inequality has risen in almost all countries regardless of who is in government. And you will see that a policy of full employment has been abandoned and that unemployment rates are much the same, notwithstanding changing economic circumstances, regardless of who is in government. In other words, it is clear that Left and Centre-Left governments have failed to deliver on all the things they say they believe in, yet blame the ‘Right’ for all our problems.
The ongoing failure of the Left has meant that the world’s problems magnify over time; the most vulnerable people suffer disproportionately, become disillusioned, eventually get angry, and vote in a reactionary manner; and our capacity to solve our problems is further undermined.
We will not solve our environmental problems – indeed, they will only get worse – unless we do something about population growth and until rich nations make the transition to a steady-state (non-growing) economy and poor nations do likewise in the near future. And we will not make the transition in a just way unless currency-issuing central governments use their fiscal capacities to ensure an equitable share of what is already a sufficient stock of real wealth through the agency of paid work (full employment) and not a Universal Basic Income, as many on the Left are now advocating oblivious to its disastrous effects. A just transition will also require an increase in the share of wealth comprised of quality and accessible public goods, which implies reducing the production of trivial goods and many luxury goods. Would you rather a publicly provided hospital bed in case you or your aging parent or grandparent gets sick or a third flat-screen television?
Yet all we hear from the Left are messages about ‘green growth’, ‘circular economy’, ‘decoupling GDP from natural resource use’, ‘fiscal sustainability’, ‘demographic transition’, and ‘aspirationalism’. Much the same as the past but done a little differently. If you believe these are solutions, you are exactly the sort of person I’m referring to. The bottom line? A Donald Trump victory in the USA and more of his type to follow.
If people on the Left (and Right) believe that growth can continue on a finite planet, don’t argue with me. Argue with those operating in the physical sciences who will tell you otherwise – the people who justifiably make jokes of economists and the social sciences generally. The term ‘social science’ has virtually become an oxymoron because it is almost entirely devoid of science. Of course, physical scientists aren’t omniscient. Most don’t understand modern money and modern markets – both functional requisites of a modern sophisticated economy – and how best to regulate modern markets to bring about oikonomic outcomes (the sustainable and equitable management of the economy for the benefit of all people) as opposed to chrematistic outcomes (the manipulation of assets, both real and financial, for the benefit of the individual regardless of whether it benefits society). Sadly, mainstream economists are just as lacking in their understanding of modern money and modern markets as physical scientists. But at least most physical scientists steer clear of areas they know little about. Conversely, for fifty years, we’ve had successive governments defer to mainstream economic advice on just about everything and have constantly reconfigured national economies in line with chrematistic principles. Neoliberalism, it should be stressed, is nothing but institutionalised chrematistics with continuous growth, needles fiscal austerity, and institutional deprivation at its core.
Meanwhile, things get worse, as the above evidence indicates; introducing genuine policy solutions becomes more difficult because the comfortable existence of movers and shakers, which includes the educated Left, depends on rising GDP, rising stock market values, and rising property prices; and the election of Trump-like characters becomes ever more likely.
Humankind had its best chance fifty years ago. Except for mainstream economists and denialists on the ideologically obsessed Right, we once took seriously the things said by the likes of Paul Ehrlich (population bomb) and the Club of Rome (limits to growth). We also possessed many of the physical and institutional structures required to make a smooth, painless, and equitable transition to an ecologically sustainable and qualitatively-improving steady-state economy, which would have ended the era of fossil fuel dependence and marked the completion of what should have been the shift to a renewable resource-based post-industrial society. But we chose not to and the Left, by succumbing to neoliberalism, has played its part in making the managed transition highly improbable. There is now enormous institutional rebuilding required to return to where we were fifty years ago, except making things more difficult will be twice the number of mouths to feed, twice the per capital resource consumption to satisfy, a sick planet, and a global economy seemingly locked into a destructive growth imperative.
From now on, I won’t be voting for political parties if they fail to represent the interests of the planet, vulnerable people, and future generations. Only when they offer something to my liking will they deserve and get my vote. Thus, no more voting for the lesser of two or more evils. I’ll leave it to your imagination to contemplate my intentions come the next federal election.
Philip Lawn
Philip Lawn is a retired evidence-based economist who has published journal articles and books on such broad topics as sustainable development, climate change, and welfare indicators. Philip spent most of his academic career at Flinders University, Adelaide. Despite retirement, Philip is working on a set of alternative sustainable development indicators and intends to write economics textbooks which better reflect concrete reality than current mainstream offerings.
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